If you suspected charging calls had gotten out of hand in college basketball, you probably discerned by now you were not alone. ESPN analyst Jay Bilas has been vocal on the subject. Michigan State coach Tom Izzo told Sporting News during the season he was so weary of seeing charges called he no longer taught the play to his Spartans.

You might be surprised to learn the NCAA men’s basketball rules committee also is on your side. They agree: There are too many charges being called.

And they have proof.

Grading of referees for the 2012 NCAA Tournament showed they got an impressive 90 percent of all calls correct — even though they got block/charge calls right only 65 percent of the time, NCAA referees coordinator John Adams told Sporting News this week.

That’s one reason the rules committee is reasserting guidelines on what constitutes a charge and asking for referees to be re-educated on how the play should be called. It will be one of the most important points covered this fall at the NCAA’s four regional refereeing seminars; all college basketball referees must attend one session to be eligible to work the NCAA Tournament.

The addition of the no-charge arc for the 2011-12 under the basket was designed to cut down on dangerous collisions when ballhandlers were most vulnerable — because they were most focused on completing a scoring play — and also to make it easier for referees to determine whether contact was occurring in what had long been declared a “no-charge zone” under the basket.

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When the problems with the charging call persisted — some might argue escalated — many fans and coaches called for the no-charge arc to be removed.

That wasn’t the issue, though. The problem leading to incorrect calls is that calling a charge became a “default” position for too many referees when they observed contact between a moving offensive player and a less mobile defensive player — even if the defender was not in legal guarding position, even if the contact was not direct. (And sometimes, charges have been called when there was little contact but the defender made it appear he’d been forced to the floor.)

“Maybe the best way to tackle this perceived issue is to go back and re-teach it,” Adams said. “You really have to know what happens prior to a collision.”

“We think the rule is fine. We think we need to re-educate the officiating community on the basic principles of legal defense.”

The rules committee specified four guidelines for the charge/block call it believes must be emphasized as referees are re-educated regarding such plays:

Before a ballhandler becomes airborne, in the committee’s words, “the defender must have two feet on the floor, be facing the opponent and be stationary” for a charge to be awarded. If not, the call should be a block.

Help defenders moving toward a ballhandler or laterally before making contact are not in legal guarding position, and the result should be a blocking call.

If a ballhandler makes contact “through the chest,” it is not automatically a charging foul. “The rule in its entirety must be considered before determining a foul.”

Most salient, the committee acknowledged “in some cases, it appears that a defender is being rewarded solely for being outside the arc without considering the other aspects of the rules.”

Since becoming the coordinator of referees in 2008, Adams has championed the proper enforcement of “legal guarding position” as a standard measure of whether a defender should be awarded a charging call.

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“To be in legal guarding position, I have to have both feet on the floor for an instant and face my opponent," he said. "After that, I can move to maintain legal guarding position — laterally, backwards. What I cannot do is move up into a dribbler or move at an angle into a dribbler.

“I see help defenders that are never legal, never had both feet on their floor facing the opponent, cutting off the dribble the moment the dribbler arrives and making contact. And we call that a charge.

“We’re still right more than we’re wrong. I’d like to see our percentages on correct calls as high with the block/charge as with the other calls we’re making.”

The rules committee’s concern over the block/charge is directly tied to the continued decline in scoring among Division I teams. NCAA statistics show the average team scored 68.01 points during the 2011-12 season — a 30-year low and easily the lowest of the shot-clock era.

Scoring was down more than a point from the previous season. This was only the second time since the shot clock was introduced in the 1985-86 season that average scoring fell below 69 points.

Hey, Anthony Davis blocked a lot of shots but not that many.

"Part of this is the reaction to: What can we do to increase scoring?” Adams said. “What is our role in making the game better?”